Nintendo’s Miyamoto stepping down to work on smaller games

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, will step down from his current
position at Nintendo but
remain with the company to work on smaller, more personal projects,
Wired has learned.

In an exclusive interview with Wired on 7 December, the
59-year-old head of Nintendo's game design department said that he
will move away from supervising the development of massive games
like this year's Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword andSuper Mario 3D Land, passing the torch to the younger
designers in the company and working on projects that won't take as
long to complete.

"Inside our office, I've been recently declaring, 'I'm going to
retire, I'm going to retire,'" Miyamoto said through his
interpreter. "I'm not saying that I'm going to retire from game
development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from
my current position."

"What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game
development once again myself," Miyamoto said. "Probably working on
a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be
interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself.
Something really small."

Miyamoto said that he's hoping to start work on a project in
2012, and hopefully show the game off publicly within the year.

"In other words, I'm not intending to start from things that
require a five-year development time," he said.

Miyamoto, whose creations propelled Nintendo to worldwide
prominence beginning with 1981′s arcade game Donkey
Kong and who is generally recognised as the world's most
influential and creative game designer, said he felt comfortable
stepping away from supervising
the Mario and Zelda games
because his staff has done such a good job with this year's
critically acclaimed entries in both series.

"I'm saying this because I have a solid reaction from the
existing teams," he said. "I was able to nurture the developers
inside Nintendo who were able to create something like this or
something like that," he said, gesturing to banners in the
interview room in Nintendo's office that showed the logos
of Skyward Sword and Mario 3D
Land.

The reason Miyamoto keeps telling the younger developers that
he's going to retire is to send the message that he won't always be
around for them to work with.

"The reason why I'm stressing that is that unless I say that I'm
retiring, I cannot nurture the young developers," he said. "After
all, if I'm there in my position as it is, then there's always kind
of a relationship. And the young guys are always kind of in a
situation where they have to listen to my ideas. But I need some
people who are growing up much more than today."

As for himself, Miyamoto seemed eager to get to work on his new
ideas with a smaller, younger staff.

"Anyway, I'm interested in doing a variety of many other
things," he said with his usual cryptic smile.

Wired's full interview with Miyamoto, including his thoughts
on Skyward Sword, making Mario Kart 7 with a Western development team, 3-D
gaming, cell phones and more on the future of games, will be
published on Wired.com next week.